If you drink, don't publish

March 20, 2008

1 Min Read
Beer & Science Don't Mix

2:40 PM -- This just in: Beer, it seems, doesn't make you smarter after all.

According to yet another survey of Czech ornithologists, beer drinking seems to have an effect on scientists opposite to the effect it has on journalists. The New York Times has the story:

  • According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.

    The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to stumble back to the lab. Publication did not simply drop off among the heaviest drinkers. Instead, scientific performance steadily declined with increasing beer consumption across the board, from scientists who primly sip at two or three beers over a year to the sort who average knocking back more than two a day.

But take the beer with a grain of salt: The author of the paper, one Dr. Grim, "said he would on occasion enjoy more than 12 beers in a night..."

— Larry, Attack Monkey, Light Reading

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